1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a product history management apparatus, and more particularly to an apparatus for issuing a label for affixing to food products.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, consumers have taken great interest in safety or quality of food products that have an intense effect on their health.
The consumers judge the product for safety or quality based on a brand of the product or indication of a label affixed to the product when purchasing food products, and select an appropriate one.
However, it is easy for dealers to determine the indication of the label as they like and to print the label. In recent years, there have been many issues regarding incorrect label indication or deceptive indication of the food products, the issues being serious in society.
The consumers have no other choice than to rely on the contents of the indication of the label affixed onto the food products and hardly acquire accurate information from the incorrect label indication.
Therefore, reliability for the indication of the food products has been remarkably lowered. In light of the circumstances, it is necessary to wrestle with a problem of how to give the consumers true information about food products.
Also, food dealers assure the consumers of safety or quality that will ease consumer's anxiety and thus can differentiate their products from those of the other dealers.
As described above, as a system for disclosing information about food products, there is a farm product distribution system based on identifier provision as described below (see JP 10-302105 A). The invention as disclosed in JP 10-302105 A aims at giving a farm product ID number and managing individual information related to the farm product together with the ID number with a computer system that is operated by a neutral organization. The consumer inquiries the ID number assigned to the purchased farm product of the computer system and thus can confirm the individual information related to the farm product.
However, this system can provide the consumer with individual information relating to produced food products, for example, vegetables and fruits when the food products are directly delivered to the consumer. However, nowadays, most of food products provided to the consumers are produced through a number of steps, making it difficult to offer the consumer complete information throughout the production steps.
Therefore, even when a product is mixed with a deceptive material in any step or stored in bad environments, the consumer hardly acquires the information about the fact.
Also, in recent years, there is an increasing demand to architect a system capable of tracing a history from a raw material to a product for pharmaceuticals as well.